Autumn is well and truly upon us. It’s raining outside, but I’ve got a roaring log fire and a book to curl up with, so it’s not that bad. Granted, those lawns aren’t going to mow themselves, but that’s a problem for future me. Present me is much more concerned with a monthly roundup, so let’s get to it.

Reading

September has been a fantastic month for reading. This is in no small part due to a man by the name of Peter David. Yes, even though my first foray into Star Trek: New Frontier was, to put it lightly, mixed, I managed to snag the rest of the series for roughly a pound per book. It’s hard to say no to a deal like that. That’s the good news. The better news is that I had started with some of the weaker books. The extra context from reading in chronological order is, of course, a boon, but even so there are some great books in here. Excalibur: Restoration may just be my favourite David book to date. I’ve decided not to do individual reviews of these books, but you can expect a full series review sometime in November.

I also managed to stop by Troutmark Books in Cardiff, which is rapidly becoming one of my favourite second-hand bookshops, and this time it turned up some real gems. As well as a belated birthday present for someone else, I picked up Opus, a book I expected to be an anthology of Asimov stories, but was actually a fairly unique work of self-criticism by the Good Doctor. There’s definitely a longer Asimov post coming at some point in the future. Alongside that I picked up The Forever Machine by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley, sometimes derided as the worst Hugo Award winner. My review of that will be up next month, but suffice to say it’s nowhere near as bad as some people would have you believe.

Other than that it’s been the usual month of wrapping up series. There was some good, hard SF from Stephen Baxter and Eric Brown, a detective novel from Adam-Troy Castro, and some award-winners from Barry B. Longyear and Lois McMaster Bujold.

Blogging

I’ve read more books than I’ve reviewed this month. Two reasons for that. First is, as mentioned above, New Frontier. The second is the fact that I’m preparing reviews well in advance for next month, when I plan to be away from my computer. I won’t be completely offline, but I’ve saved up a post a week for October. Wouldn’t want to lose that precious blogging streak after all. I feel like I’m settling into a good middle ground between individual reviews and series reviews. the logical next step is to review an author’s entire body of work, which is the direction I’ll likely go in for my upcoming Isaac Asimov article.

I also put out two more experimental posts this month. One was a whistle-stop tour of some of the military SF I’ve been reading lately, looking at ways the Iraq War might have influenced the genre. I’d like to do more analytical articles like this in the future, but it does rely on finding the right books at the right time, and doing a whole lot of research.

The other article was more of an opinion piece, somewhat sliding into a rant as it went on. I encourage you to read it yourself, but it was essentially me venting my frustrations with certain practices in the bookish community. I think there is a very real problem arising with people turning their hobbies into side hustles, and it’s something I might return to in the future.

In the News

The world is basically on fire, but in science fiction terms, September has been a very quiet news month. Oh, there’s bound to be something I’ve forgotten about or overlooked, but it’s been nice to have a month to get on top of things without having to worry about anything new.

Updates

I am staring down the barrel of my one thousandth post, and I think I know the direction I’m going to go with it. A bit retrospective, a bit of a celebration, but also laying the foundations for all the posts that are yet to come.

I’m also considering something of an overhaul for this blog in the new year. Not as big a change as when I adopted this snazzy new theme and waved goodbye to the splurge of the first three years, but a bit of a reshaping. A lot of the impetus for this has come from these roundup and TBR & Beyond posts. They help me keep track of things, but I wonder if there isn’t a better way to do things. I might play around with structure a little to make things more coherent. then again, I might not. I might change my mind and keep things as they are. Who’s to say?